Spain's Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a former close ally of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez into custody in a corruption investigation that has threatened to topple the leftist government.

The probe into Jose Luis Abalos, a former transport minister and Socialist party heavyweight who helped propel Sanchez to power in 2018, is one of several corruption affairs rattling his fragile minority coalition.

Abalos, his ex-adviser Koldo Garcia and another former senior Socialist figure, Santos Cerdan, are suspected of pocketing kickbacks for the awarding of public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Abalos and Garcia will be remanded in custody without bail on suspicion of bribery, influence peddling, embezzlement and for an "extreme" flight risk, the Supreme Court said in a statement.

"Numerous rational indications of criminality exist against both," and the measures ordered against them came "combined with a foreseeably imminent trial", the court added.

Prosecutors have demanded 24 years in jail for Abalos, who was expelled from the Socialist party and sits as an independent MP in parliament, and 19 and a half years for Garcia.

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Cerdan, who was released last week, spent almost five months in jail after relinquishing his powerful post as Socialist organisation secretary and as an MP.

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The scandal has rocked a government that came to power promising to clean up Spanish politics after the main conservative Popular Party was convicted in its own graft affair.

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I passed by a bus stop yesterday and there is now a no trespassing sign and a no loitering sign up. That seems odd for a public bus stop.

The statement said: “Many Democratic governments, including the United States government, have previously reviewed such proposals and reached the same conclusion: that classifying the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group is completely detached from reality and not supported by any evidence (..) The facts have not changed.”

It added: “But what has only changed is the level of external pressure, especially that exerted by the United Arab Emirates and Israel, to adopt policies that serve foreign agendas and not the interests of the American people”.

If Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been a site of tension in your family for the last two Thanksgiving holidays, this year should be no different. The so-called ceasefire might seem like a good excuse to bury the hatchet and enjoy a quieter turkey dinner, but when we look at the harrowing status quo for Palestinians in Gaza today, there is no peace to be thankful for — especially not on a day that marks the remembrance of this country’s own genocide against Indigenous Americans.

To be clear, if two years of livestreamed annihilation have failed to shift your loved ones’ support away from the Israeli ethnostate, I doubt there is anything a dinner table argument could do to persuade them. There can be no reasoning with a worldview that forecloses seeing Palestinians as fully human.

I navigate this with pro-Israel members of my own British Jewish family. It’s painful, and I don’t have any good advice. Whatever your approach with your family, there can be no pretense that the genocide in Gaza is over.

"My pronouns are double bacon cheese burger!"

Please note this was written in 1993, so the wheels of time turned to prove Hugh White wrong in some of his assessments. But the strategic choices Australia has made feel a little clearer from reading this. Especially in this year 2025 as the geo-strategic game has violently woken from its long slumber under US domination.

Why Great Powers Sleepwalk to War — A Masterclass with Hugh White - podcast

Hugh Whites Strategy Reading List ^I haven't had time to read this, but its part of the supplementary material for the podcast conversation^

https://archive.ph/J6dMs

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/42589825

Web archive link

...

The highly-discussed draft 28-point peace plan (now reportedly revised to 19 points) endorsed by the United States seems to address, although not resolve, all the major points, including the return of abducted children of Ukraine.

According to the available text of the initial plan, “A humanitarian committee will be established to resolve open issues,” including the return of civilian detainees and reunification of families. In the current version, such a committee will be launched after the deal is agreed upon. Such an approach is dangerous.

Russia has attempted many times to turn Ukrainian abducted children into bargaining chips. Suggestions to exchange them for POWs have been unsuccessfully floated during the Istanbul talks. The proposal demonstrates Russia’s approach to children in general: a source of leverage that can be pulled to extract concessions, muddy the waters, and delay the agreements.

Ukraine made it clear: abducted children should be returned unconditionally and before the deal is finalized with Putin. Otherwise, Russia has no incentive to return children and will take forever to give back a fraction of those who have been kidnapped. What prevents Russia from signing an agreement, having sanctions lifted, and taking ten years to find children that it has “rescued”? By that time, most children will either be adopted, drafted to the army, or brainwashed beyond the point of no return. And Russia will bear no consequences for its actions.

...

The current peace plan also does not mention anything about children in the occupied territories of Ukraine. 1.6 million Ukrainian children are trapped under the Russian occupation, facing militarization and conscription into the Russian army. At least 600,000 children are of school age and forced to study in Russian schools and visit notorious military camps. Many of them want to go to Ukraine but have no safe way to do so. Many are waiting to be liberated and hope to go back to their normal lives. The current peace plan serves those children to Putin on a silver platter by giving up their homeland and omitting the need to rescue them from the Russian occupation.

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The fact that there is no mention of international legislation that regulates the issue of crimes against children (the Genocide Convention or the Convention on the Rights of the Child) is very alarming. Those documents provide concrete procedures for executing the returns and would pressure Russia to comply. Leaving them out of the deal would give Russia an upper hand in organizing the return of children. Nothing in the current deal prevents Russia from returning a dozen children and calling it even. Without third-party access to Russian records and effective monitoring mechanisms for the return process, talk of rescue risks becoming performative rather than effective.

Overall, a peace plan in its current version allows Russia to dictate the fate of thousands of Ukrainian children who have been abducted or live under occupation. This can easily turn from a humanitarian catastrophe to a national security threat. Russia will turn Ukrainian children into soldiers for future wars against NATO. The administration should reaffirm its commitment to saving children everywhere by including Ukraine in peace negotiations and making the return of children a precondition for further negotiations.

[Edit to insert the link.]

Web archive link

...

The highly-discussed draft 28-point peace plan (now reportedly revised to 19 points) endorsed by the United States seems to address, although not resolve, all the major points, including the return of abducted children of Ukraine.

According to the available text of the initial plan, “A humanitarian committee will be established to resolve open issues,” including the return of civilian detainees and reunification of families. In the current version, such a committee will be launched after the deal is agreed upon. Such an approach is dangerous.

Russia has attempted many times to turn Ukrainian abducted children into bargaining chips. Suggestions to exchange them for POWs have been unsuccessfully floated during the Istanbul talks. The proposal demonstrates Russia’s approach to children in general: a source of leverage that can be pulled to extract concessions, muddy the waters, and delay the agreements.

Ukraine made it clear: abducted children should be returned unconditionally and before the deal is finalized with Putin. Otherwise, Russia has no incentive to return children and will take forever to give back a fraction of those who have been kidnapped. What prevents Russia from signing an agreement, having sanctions lifted, and taking ten years to find children that it has “rescued”? By that time, most children will either be adopted, drafted to the army, or brainwashed beyond the point of no return. And Russia will bear no consequences for its actions.

...

The current peace plan also does not mention anything about children in the occupied territories of Ukraine. 1.6 million Ukrainian children are trapped under the Russian occupation, facing militarization and conscription into the Russian army. At least 600,000 children are of school age and forced to study in Russian schools and visit notorious military camps. Many of them want to go to Ukraine but have no safe way to do so. Many are waiting to be liberated and hope to go back to their normal lives. The current peace plan serves those children to Putin on a silver platter by giving up their homeland and omitting the need to rescue them from the Russian occupation.

...

The fact that there is no mention of international legislation that regulates the issue of crimes against children (the Genocide Convention or the Convention on the Rights of the Child) is very alarming. Those documents provide concrete procedures for executing the returns and would pressure Russia to comply. Leaving them out of the deal would give Russia an upper hand in organizing the return of children. Nothing in the current deal prevents Russia from returning a dozen children and calling it even. Without third-party access to Russian records and effective monitoring mechanisms for the return process, talk of rescue risks becoming performative rather than effective.

Overall, a peace plan in its current version allows Russia to dictate the fate of thousands of Ukrainian children who have been abducted or live under occupation. This can easily turn from a humanitarian catastrophe to a national security threat. Russia will turn Ukrainian children into soldiers for future wars against NATO. The administration should reaffirm its commitment to saving children everywhere by including Ukraine in peace negotiations and making the return of children a precondition for further negotiations.

[Edit to insert the link.]

cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/31211123

I honest to fucking God don't understand how cybersec is so fucking bad that there are so many damn data breaches that I lost count. I had a few accounts on chatgpt (that I dont use anymore) but they are all compromised now...

Just what the fuck is this shit? Are they done by lone actors or cybercrime gang? Or are they state actors or state-backed actors? Or are they inside jobs to allow the company to sell data illegally to make more money? Flock has admitted to using data from data breaches to their system.

You also notice how rarely you hear about cybercriminals getting caught? It's almost like if you take even a minor bit of opsec you can get away with anything.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/39392633

LIMA, Peru (AP) — A Peruvian court on Wednesday sentenced former President Martín Vizcarra to 14 years in prison after finding him guilty of taking bribes while serving as governor of a southern state.

Vizcarra was sentenced to immediate imprisonment and a nine-year ban from public office. He is expected to appeal the decision.

“This is not justice, it is revenge,” Vizcarra said on social media. “But they will not break me.”

Vizcarra alleged his sentence was retribution for “standing up” to the right-wing political groups that control Congress, among which the influence of the late former President Alberto Fujimori is particularly prominent. Vizcarra clashed with these groups when he led the South American country between 2018 and 2020 and eventually dissolved Congress.

The criminal court in the capital, Lima, concluded that Vizcarra received illegal payments from companies in exchange for awarding them contracts for two major projects — an irrigation system and the construction of a hospital — during his time as governor of Moquegua.

An unholy alliance between Big Tech and the far right is taking shape.

Together, they fuse the ruthless pursuit of profit with systems of control and violence. It is an assault on democracy and freedom — in the workplace and beyond.

Amazon sits at the heart of this machine.

The EU Parliament wants to allow bomb manufacturers and ammunition companies to bypass maximum work hours in case of a security crisis. Belgian representative Marc Botenga is not having it. He says the EU Parliament is betraying workers.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/55895056

Hey there,

When browsing awesome-selfhosted, especially via the web version, I always got somewhat annoyed that I couldn't filter and sort it appropriately. For example, I wanted to only show blogging software that supports Docker or PHP deployments, but I'd have to manually scan through everything and cross-reference the deployment tags.

So I created a custom frontend that uses the data from awesome-selfhosted and gives the ability to sort and filter for the relevant projects. There are also commit graphs that come directly from the data of the awesome-selfhosted repo so you can see at a glance which projects are actively maintained.

I also just finished the work on some mobile improvements today to allow the website to be (hopefully) usable on phones as well.

Would love to hear some feedback.

Website: https://awesome-web.theravenhub.com/ GitHub: https://github.com/Rabenherz112/awesome-selfhosted-web-gen

A new feature on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter allows users to see the location of other accounts. It has resulted in a firestorm of recriminations

When X rolled out a new feature revealing the locations of popular accounts, the company was acting to boost transparency and clamp down on disinformation. The result, however, has been a circular firing squad of recriminations, as users turn on each other enraged by the revelation that dozens of popular “America first” and pro-Trump accounts originated overseas.

An Ivanka Trump fan account that posts about illegal immigration to the US was shown to be based in Nigeria. MAGAStorm, spreading conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt on Trump, was found to be in eastern Europe. AmericanVoice which posts anti-Islam content, is based in India.

Users have noted that a high proportion of these potentially misleading accounts – many of which claim to be in America – are operating from Asia, but experts are in disagreement over whether they may be state-backed influence campaigns or even opportunists trying to make a quick buck.